Federal Judge Royce C. Lamberth today warned the EPA not to discriminate against conservative groups in how it responds to open records requests. He said the agency may have lied to the court and showed “apathy and carelessness” in carrying out the law.

He said he could not prove that officials intentionally destroyed documents, but he described as an “absurdity” the way the EPA handled a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Landmark Legal Foundation and the court case stemming from it—including late last week admitting that it misled the court about how it went about “searching for documents.”

In a scorching 25-page opinion, the judge accused the agency of insulting him by first claiming it had conducted a full search for records, then years later retracted that claim in a footnote to another document without giving any explanation for how it erred.

“The recurrent instances of disregard that EPA employees display for FOIA obligations should not be tolerated by the agency,” the judge said. “This court would implore the executive branch to take greater responsibility in ensuring that all EPA FOIA requests — regardless of the political affiliation of the requester — are treated with equal respect and conscientiousness.”

This particular ruling can also be seen as a rebuke to President Obama who vowed to run the “most transparent administration in history” but has received constant challenges over how that vow has been carried out. Judge Lamberth made a point of the EPA delay of follow through on Landmark’s request until after the 2012 elections, and said explanations by EPA officials for why they failed to live up to the law “defied reason.”

Mark Levin, Landmark’s president, said it is up to the president to decide how to respond, but people should be fired. Nena Shaw and Eric Wachter, Judge Lamberth said, either lied to the court or showed utter indifference to the law.

Is it proper to send roses to a federal court? Probably not, but this arrogant agency certainly deserves a legal slap-down.

Well, well. All that huffing and puffing, the firestorm about Bibi Netanyahu not informing the White House before he accepted Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to address Congress? The New York Times even used the word “unprecedented.” Bibi had not only “disrespected” the current occupant of the White House, whose aides had called Prime Minister Netanyahu a “chickenshit” and disrespected the institution of the Presidency itself. IgnoringProtocol, they claimed.

It was one of the New York Times’ infamous “corrections.”Attached on January 30 to a story that ran the previous day about Benjamin Netanyahu’s difficult relations with the Democratic Party. Here is the correction in its entirety: “An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.”

Every other news source picked up the article about the “disrespect” on the basis of the Times report. As the Tablet reported:

The decent thing to do would’ve been to write another piece altogether, contemplate why the paper of record got suckered so badly by the White House—which gained plenty from the manufactured story—and amend any and all implications of Bibi’s perfidy and bad manners that arose from the original report.

But that’s the state of the news business today. Times’ corrections provide a continuing source of amusement. NBC is trying desperately to decide if they can possibly rescue Brian Williams from his perfidy, and the “mainstream media” wonders why subscriptions are declining.

Have you heard that the ice is melting at the poles in a clear sign of climate catastrophe? Last night I was listening to a podcast of the John Batchelor show, and heard an admiral saying how useful drones would be for patrolling the Arctic when it was ice free. Huh?

I was surprised that the idea that the ice at the poles is catastrophically melting has inflicted the military, and apparently military planning. The ice freezes in the winter and melts some in the summer. Every year.

Ted Maksym, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts is going to get some grief from the global warming true believers for not adhering to the article of faith that man is overheating the Earth by burning fossil fuels.

Arctic sea ice has reached the largest December extent in a decade. Federal experts will not acknowledge this since their funding depends on a misinformed Congress and gullible public.

“The North and South Poles are ‘not melting,'”the British Express reported on Christmas. “In fact,” the Express said in its coverage of Maksym’s finding, the poles are ‘much more stable ‘ than climate scientists once predicted and could even be much thicker than previously thought.”

The ‘narrative’ in America is that the ice is melting, and you will find little confirmation in the media that that is not the case. Remember the “walrus scare,” the constant assertion that the polar bears are endangered, threatened, dying, suffering because of a lack of ice? It has been a constant story, enlivened by pictures of bears crouched on too-small bits of ice, looking pathetic. Well, never fear.

Today’s economics lesson is from Casey Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago. In an article about the effects of the Affordable Care Act on Economic Productivity from Imprimus, he begins with a key economic concept called “tax distortions.”

Tax distortions are changes in behavior on the part of businesses or households for the purpose of reducing their taxes or increasing their subsidies. We call them distortions because they don’t occur for real business or real personal reasons. They occur because of the tax code. A prime example of a tax policy that creates distortions is the ethanol subsidy—technically it is a credit, not a subsidy—whereby gasoline refiners are subsidized on the basis of how many gallons of gas they produce with ethanol. Because of this subsidy, businesses change the type of gas they produce and deliver, people change the type of gas they use—which affects engines—and corn is used for ethanol instead of as feed or food. Nor do the distortions stop there. Arguably, food prices are increased due to the re-location of corn to different uses—and when food prices are higher, restaurants and households do things differently. There are distortions economy-wide, all for the chasing of a subsidy.

To be clear, just because taxes cause distortions doesn’t mean that we should never have taxes. It just means that in order to get the full picture when it comes to policies like an ethanol subsidy or laws such as the ACA, we need to take into account the tax distortions in order to ensure that the benefits we are seeking exceed the costs.

Tuck that one away in the back of your head, and haul it out when another wonderful scheme is offered to save the planet or care for our health and well-being.

“The White House forged ahead Monday with yet another piece of its climate change agenda and bragged that Republicans are powerless to stop it.” reported the Washington Times.

A presidential task force unveiled a report on how communities across the country can prepare for the effects of global warming. In all, the recommendations on “climate preparedness and resilience” could cost the federal government more than $100 billion to protect drinking water supplies, shore up coastlines against rising sea levels and take other preventive measures.

The rise in sea level is measured in millimeters, not feet. There has been no warming at all for over eighteen years. The ice is already forming on the Great Lakes, and it looks like we’re in for a really cold winter—yet the EPA is intent on shutting down as many coal-fired power plants as they can because they might emit carbon dioxide — which is a natural fertilizer that is making our forests grow and helping to feed the world. In New England, they had a hard time providing enough power last winter, and will have to depend on Canada to get through this one.

For at least 120 years climate “scientists” have been claiming that the climate is going to kill us all, they just keep switching to a global ice age or a hotter globe. Here’s a timeline of claims about the climate: (Do read it all)

1938 - Global warming, caused by man heating the planet with carbon dioxide, “is likely to prove beneficial to mankind in several ways, besides the provision of heat and power.”– Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society

1938 - “Experts puzzle over 20 year mercury rise…Chicago is in the front rank of thousands of cities thruout the world which have been affected by a mysterious trend toward warmer climate in the last two decades” – Chicago Tribune

1939 - “Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right… weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer” – Washington Post

The “mystery” virus that is hospitalizing children all over the U.S. seems to be closely related to “Human rhinoviruses and entroviruses in influenza-like illness in Latin America.” The federal government has been anxious to get the illegal alien children creating chaos near the border indiscriminately distributed around the United States. Since the object is amnesty for all, and putting all into our public schools, they want to get them out of the inadequate facilities where they are first “processed.”

Too many embarrassing pictures are being posted. It is noticed that no one is being shipped back home. They’re not getting medically screened, but just put on buses or planes to another part of the country, and theoretically told to report back for their hearing in 15 days, but only a miniscule percentage actually turn up.

This is basically the same virus commonly seen in the equatorial Americas and South America. The very odd emergence of this virus at this time – especially just prior to the new school year and now fueled by the congregation of children in schools – demands an explanation. The only plausible one is that this has been brought here from south of the – now non-existent – border.

Although there will be a good deal of epidemiological work to be done before this can be scientifically associated, there is a deafening silence on the part of public health officials and the mainstream media in even speculating about this association. This is not simply a case of being politically selective about the news, it is downright dangerous and could be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the emergence of diseases long absent from daily life in America now suddenly popping up “inexplicably.” By the way the article from the Journal that I cited [linked above] likely represents gross underreporting which is typical in South America.

Obama has been so anxious to regularize the influx of illegals, particularly children, that he has ignored one regulation or law after another— apparently making it up as he goes along. The kids have been shipped out all over the country, and local public schools have been told to accept them without asking any questions. Like have they been medically screened? How old are they? (There are reports of 31 year-old ‘children’). They do not speak English. Who is going to pay for this influx? Have they reported back for their formal immigration hearing? Are they going to be deported or returned to their home country? School districts are beginning to scream about how they are to cope and who is going to pay.

All is based on the illusion that Hispanic voters want illegal aliens to receive amnesty, but that seems not to be the case. Sixty-four percent of Hispanics say they want them sent back home, and 77 percent of Americans also want them returned home. Only 11 percent of the people favor amnesty. Obama is getting a slight inkling that amnesty is not popular—he is putting it off till after the election. That grab-bag of unpopular ideas put off till later when, hopefully, no one will notice.

This is seeming like a political move, poorly thought out, that is showing more and more evidence of turning into a colossal catastrophe. And the now-open borders promise terrorist attacks. This is not just simple incompetence, it’s far, far worse.

The United States will never have control of its borders, and the influx will not stop until we say our laws have clear meaning, and illegal aliens must return home. After that, our immigration laws can be rewritten with work permits for those who want only the opportunity to work, and perhaps some leeway for those who have been here for years through no fault of their own. But at some point you must demand that the laws be obeyed — in spite of all protestations. There is no other way.

As a woman, I have never understood the idea of “the first woman” and why that would seem important to any voter. The highest office in the land depends on qualifications and proven competence. Whether it is a woman, a man, or the first person of any particular race, ethnicity or sexual preference should not make the slightest difference. I have opposed Barack Obama, not because of his race, but because he had no real qualifications. To assume that there is something special about a president because of his race is absurd. You would have to be remarkably racist to assume that skin color has anything to do with qualifications and competence.

By the time someone aspires to the presidency, they need to have a solid record of accomplishments. I’m never enthusiastic about senators as presidential candidates. Their accomplishments are largely in making speeches and in their voting record. Those who champion an important bill and push it through have an accomplishment. Those who just vote aye or nay haven’t got much.

Hillary originally thought that being married to the president qualified her to be his co-president, until the people rose up and said ‘Wait just a minute—we didn’t elect you.’ When Patrick Moynihan died, a safe Democratic senate seat opened up, and Hillary quickly bought a home in the district and ran for the Senate. Her qualifications were that she had been first lady. Members of Congress who die in office are often replaced by their widows, who get elected on name familiarity or sympathy, not qualifications. Hillary’s senate career was unremarkable. Her tenure as Secretary of State was unremarkable and tallied up only in air miles.

The Benghazi scandal was typical Hillary. She didn’t know, she wasn’t informed, she met the parents when the bodies were returned and told them that they would get the guy who made the video — which she surely knew at the time was a complete crock. Hillary has remarkably poor political instincts— understanding instinctively how something will play with the public. And she’s always stepping in it. When she does, she reacts poorly as “What difference does it make” demonstrates.

An ambassador killed because he does not have the protection he requested. Two former SEALS who ran to the sound of the guns, saved 30 people and waited and waited for seven hours for help that never came. How can anyone have such abysmal political instincts that they do not understand how that will play out with the American people. But she didn’t. And there are dozens more examples of the same lack.